


You Feel Like Home

by amyponders



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Comfort/Angst, Dialogue Light, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyponders/pseuds/amyponders
Summary: Bucky has another one of his nightmares and Wanda rushes to his room to calm him down.





	You Feel Like Home

A heartrending cry woke her up. She inhaled sharply as her eyes flew wide open. She sat up hurriedly and put a light jacket on top of her silk camisole and walked to the door. On any other night she would not have dared venture outside her room this late and dressed so inadequately in a house filled mostly with men, but she could already hear the frantic shuffle of feet that were headed to the same place she was, and there was no time. The problem was, none of them knew exactly what to do, or what’s worse, they didn’t even dare come close near him, lest they got hurt, or made matters worse. And the ones that did dare, like Banner, Thor or T’Challa wouldn’t hesitate to use force to restrain him and make him compliant. Big brutes, the lot of them. As if he hadn’t had enough of that already. No, what he needed was a soft touch: a woman’s touch, made both of soothing caresses and a tight grip. But most of all, he needed someone with _her_ kind of abilities, the ones that she had formerly used for well-intentioned, but ill-fated purposes. The ones she was learning how to hone and sharpen and control so she could do good this time instead.

Wanda heard another sharp cry and hurried her feet along. The halls of the Stark mansion seemed to just stretch on longer with every stride she took. Finally, she reached the source of the screams. She could feel the energy radiating like a distress call, even with the door closed. In fact, she’d felt it almost as soon as she woke up. It was just stronger here. Outside Bucky’s door, Tony usually just stood in front of the frame, waiting for her to come and enter the room first. And tonight, it was no different. Next to him was Thor —looking unusually somber—, and Vision, who lingered a second too long looking at her bare ivory legs, then up at her soft rising chest —and she could swear that were it not because he was a piece of metal and software— he’d blush a deeper shade of red. She knew he had a thing for her ever since he came into existence, but she just didn’t have the energy for that. Losing her brother in battle had been a traumatizing event in her life. And to throw herself into a relationship this quickly would not be the wisest course of action.

Her heart was shattered. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if she had a heart anymore, or if it had burnt to ashes and turned to dust the moment her brother gave his last breath. After the incident, she’d just shut herself from others, and the only moments when she’d come out of her self-imposed emotional leave were the moments when Bucky would wake up screaming from a nightmare to either try to punch his way through a wall or cry out in a panic-induced state and wake up half the mansion in the process. Those moments, much to her dismay —and everyone else’s distaste—, were increasing. And she didn’t have the heart to leave him hanging. Even if she wanted nothing more than to disappear, she’d made herself available for him, stepping up when other had backed out.

She eyed them once just passingly and turned the knob in her hands, it was ice-cold like the night. Inside the darkly painted room, Bucky, dressed in nothing but some black sweatpants, huffed beside a tangled mess of sheets and torn pillows. He’d teared (or maybe bitten?) his way through one of them, and the other one was strewn across the room. It laid haphazardly at her feet. She moved with care, so as not to stumble with it and circled it while looking intently at him for a sign that she could approach. He didn’t relent, so she continued anyway. He looked like he wasn’t aware of much outside of his own head, she could sense the strong puzzling energy he emitted. Instead, he continued to pace unevenly, groaning and scowling and muttering words under his breath. He was clearly distraught.  With the other two steps she took, she realized he was speaking in Russian, no doubt thanks to his time in Siberia. His programming was showing again, a side effect of living in constant stress and pressure. And even if Bucky was starting to slowly recover pieces of his past, like his name and some memories, it seemed like Steve was the closest thing he had to a lighthouse, illuminating the stormy and rocky shore of his mind.

But Steve wasn’t around tonight. He’d been away for the better part of the month on some government errand, designated most likely to keep him away from the mansion and subsequently, trouble. He and Tony still weren’t on the best of terms. The problem was that as transparent as the government had been about this decoy mission, Steve didn’t seem to mind, as he willfully took the bait and agreed to being shipped away for weeks, even knowing the frail state of his friend’s mind. She couldn’t exactly blame him. Steve was the kind of person that took the burden of the world on his shoulders. He truly and genuinely cared. He cared about the world, he cared about his friends and he cared about Bucky. But something was off with him lately. Maybe, she guessed, he just couldn’t deal anymore. The emotional exhaustion of the last century of fighting everyone’s battles (literally and figuratively) finally catching up to him. Steve had never been a quitter, he’d said he would return as soon as the mission was over, and she believed him, and honestly, after all they’d been through, she didn’t exactly felt like pointing fingers. She’d sensed a great deal of sorrow in Steve the day he took off with Clint and Natasha. Whatever it had been, the fact of the matter was that he was gone, and she was all Bucky had.

Wanda’s memories about the first night she’d heard Bucky screaming flooded her mind. Steve had been the first one to come to his room. By the time she and the rest of the guys had arrived, he’d subdued him and was holding him in a mix of a tight lock and a hug, part consoling him, part making sure he wouldn’t go outside the room and hurt anyone, or himself. She’d walked in quietly and sat down next to them, her voice a calming essence to him. She’d shushed him the way you hush a frightful lamb and then she deftly knocked him out with a mental spell. After that, it hadn’t been that easy, mostly because she’d lost the element of surprise. He was always expecting it now and put up a lot more resistance.

And he was strong, both physically and mentally, —mentally she dared say even more so—. And considering that his physical conditioning was top notch, it was no small deal to say that. She wasn’t entirely aware of the things HYDRA had done to him in Siberia, even if she’d caught glimpses of his suffering, but the few bits she’d felt had been terrifyingly painful. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what it would take to live constantly in agony, to be conditioned to it to the point that breaking away from it —like he was trying to do— was even more brutal than letting it consume him piece by piece. She imagined it was like laying in a bed of needles that only punctured your skin deeper the more you tried to get away. But whatever they had done to him had made his mind a soldier’s trench, a stronghold that had kept its walls over the decades, but was now crumbling down and threatening to bury under the rubble him and anyone else that dared come close.

As she moved towards him, she felt Thor trailing her from behind.

“Don’t.” She said abruptly with a slight hint of annoyance in her voice.

He stopped dead in his tracks and gave her a look. She returned it with a severe expression in her face.

“I can handle this,” she punctuated in her heavy accent.

Thor looked back at Tony who was still standing by the door, and when Tony nodded he started backtracking slowly, until he reached the doorframe. Wanda gave a few more steps before finally stopping and extended her arm towards him.

“James?” At the sound of his name he gazed around the room disoriented, his eyes almost bulging from his sockets. He looked like a cornered animal. “James, it’s me. Wanda. Won’t you let me come close to you, sweetheart? I won’t hurt you.” She reassured him with a steady look. When he didn’t answer, she pressed on. “In fact, no one can. You’re safe here. I need you to believe me. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real. You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“N-no. They were here.” He said hesitantly between heavy huffs.

“Who were?”

“They. HYDRA. They were here, I couldn’t let them take me again. I couldn’t-…” he trailed off and looked around the room.

He saw the bed, the sheets and the pillows that he’d torn apart. His night lamp was thrown in the ground with dozens of tiny little shards of glass sprawled dangerously across the floor. A single photo frame of him and Steve was lying on the floor as well. It had been a gift from Nick Fury to both of them. Nick had given it to Steve as a birthday present and Steve, after fighting with the copier machine in Tony’s studio, had gingerly called on Wanda to help him figure it out. She’d made him a copy of it that he framed carefully and gave to Bucky after he moved to the mansion, surely as a way for him to remember who he was and to hold on to the brave soldier he was, before HYDRA got a hold of him. Tears started to well in his eyes when he realized that it had been yet another panic attack caused by his triggering memories, of which he had no control. The look on his face right there was enough to break someone’s heart in a hundred pieces. Wanda gulped as she felt the familiar sting forming in her eyes and her throat. She had to keep her composure for him.

“I don’t think they were here. Hey, James. It’s okay. It was just a nightmare.”

He grimaced and turned his face away to cry but she caught him in her arms and wrapped him in a warm embrace. “I can’t do this anymore, Scar.” He’d taken to calling her Scar after Tony baptized her as Scarlet Witch. Now she was crying, too.

“Yes, you can.” She said firmly but lovingly. “Because you’re strong… so strong. And because you have me.” She smiled absently. “You know I’ll be here for you.”

He sobbed and hid his face in the nook of her neck, almost falling on top of her. His weight shifted and she almost tripped. He was heavy as much as he was sorrowful. She had to use her powers to keep her balance.

“Shh. Shh. You’re safe, James. You’re safe.” She repeated as a mantra. She led him to the bed and stood with her knees pressed tightly against the edge of the bed while he sank down and almost melted into her chest. He whimpered softly unto her nightgown, inhaling her sweet aroma and letting the smell enter his every pore and calm him down. Wanda leaned in protectively and caressed his long, pitch-black hair tenderly. She could feel his every resolve fading away. She moved to sit down next to him, but instead he slid down slowly until his face was resting securely on her lap. James shut his eyes. She realized startled that Tony, Vision and Thor were still standing by the door. She eyed them and silently told them with a jerk of her head to beat it. He deserved privacy, and frankly, she was annoyed by their presence.

She wanted him, —them— to have a moment of peace in the house for once, with no one watching them as if they were going to break at any moment, which, if she was being fair to them, they might. Out of all the people in the house, both of them were by far the most broken and fucked up. But that didn’t take away from the fact that she was tired of people walking on eggshells around them. And she was sure James was tired of that too. Didn’t they understand how much more difficult it was to heal and put the past behind when everyone around you keeps acting like you’re not you, like you’re a threat that should be kept at arm’s length, and be extensively watched so that you don’t commit another atrocity? When they can’t even have faith in you, how can you?

They sought each other at this critical moment and Wanda needed to vent too. A stream of tears silently escaped her eyes and she let them fall, feeling the tight rope around her heart loosen a little. By now his breath had steadied and he kept his eyes closed. He looked so peaceful compared to a few minutes ago. She touched his face with the tip of her fingers, ever so softly, hesitant at first but then more surely as he seemed to wade into her, probably touch-starved after so many years of blood-red battles and endless missions that took a toll on his soul and his personality, leaving him torn and confused rather than whole. They laid there for what seemed like ages.

When the silence broke, it was him who spoke first. His tone was uneven, with long pauses in between, but with an unusual clarity. “I… feel like there’s this person in my head. This… other being that’s been caged away, but wants to come out now and wreak havoc. And after all this years… I’m not entirely sure I’m not him and that James is just a figment of my imagination. A person I created to fight the pressure… the pain of not knowing who I was for so many decades.”

“Sweetheart, you’re as real as everything around you right now.” She counteracted, still lightly caressing his face.

“How can you be sure? I mean you weren’t even born yet.” He was referring to the fact that he was several decades older than her.

“Because, grandpa, I believe Steve.”

At the sound of her calling him grandpa he couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Besides, I read your file.”

When he didn’t say anything, she added: “When Tony and Steve first brought you here you were officially ‘under observation’. They gave us all a briefing. You came with a handy file. So did I. We were the dangerous outsiders…” She trailed off.

“Oh, that’s right.” He smiled faintly. His eyelids were fluttering.

“James…?”

“Hm?”

“I think I should get back. I imagine Tony is waiting in his studio for me to tell him that everything’s okay.” And probably to make sure she was fine. He was distrustful of James and didn’t like for anyone to be around him for long. She started shuffling as if to get up but he moved first.

“No, Scar, don’t go.” He pleaded, his ocean-blue eyes staring deeply into hers and she swallowed hard.

He raised his body and lifted his right hand to put it on the side of her neck, underneath the thick curtain of her deep-red hair. Her heartbeat was picking up the pace. Even if he was close to being a century old, he still didn’t look a day over 30. Sometimes she forgot how handsome he was, even with his tired face and sorrowful soul. She liked to tell herself she was immune to charm, but that wasn’t true.

“Please… Truth is… the only time I can sleep is when you’re near.”  

She looked a little taken aback. “How so?”

“Well, you knock me out with your powers often.”

She chuckled.

“But also, I don’t know… there’s something about you that’s comforting.” He lowered his voice until it was barely a whisper. That had to count as the first time someone’s ever referred to her or her powers as ‘comforting’. Something inside her flipped.

“I think you should ask Tony to let you stay here… if you want.” He trailed off but his eyes gleamed, he was actually excited at the thought, if a little scared at what her reaction was going to be like.

For a small moment she saw a glimmer of what his past self had probably been. Judging by Steve’s stories and the way he looked in his only remaining picture of his pre-H.Y.D.R.A. days, he’d been a gentleman, a loyal friend and a happy, chatty, lively person. His petition took her by surprise, but not more than her own answer: “Maybe I will…” He exhaled and smiled in relief. She smiled back. It was clear that he needed her, and she needed him back in a way too. It made sense that they stuck together. They were developing a bond that could save them both. She really wanted to help him. He lay back again and crawled up until he had his back to her side. Wanda found the sheet dangling from the bed and threw it over them, then turned over so as to embrace him from behind. She decided to stay. Tony and his biases be damned. Tomorrow would take care of itself.


End file.
